Anaheim Courtyard by Marriott: Families Focused on Fun

“Before, it used to be concrete so there wasn’t a day that we wouldn’t get an injury. So when we’d get injuries we’d give our injury reports every day even if it’s a band-aid or something like that… ever since we had Life Floor we haven’t had one.”

— Ari Padila Waterpark Supervisor

Excited vacationers looking to experience the best of Southern California look to the Anaheim Courtyard by Marriott whether it’s an annual seasonal visit, or a once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

In addition to spacious accommodations and wonderful staff, the hotel is proud to offer guests their Surfside Waterpark, a 20,000 sq ft waterpark for families to bond and kids to play off a day of excited energy. They first approached Life Floor in 2017 for their kiddie pool and stairs, and after two years of reduced injuries, they came back with ideas to expand the surfacing. 

This 4,300 sq ft concrete splash park that sat underneath a WhiteWater West multi-level play structure had been a significant pain point and continued to stain and deteriorate. The splash park’s concrete surfacing got extremely hot in the Southern California sun and the kids would be so excited to play and get off the slides that they would slip and fall on the abrasive surface.

The WhiteWater design team wanted to create a surface that combined safety, comfort, and play elements, like hopscotch, surfboards, a Twister-like game, and inlaid sea creatures, in order to enhance the guest experience with both passive and active play value.

Going from daily injuries to injury-free days was a huge relief for the Courtyard by Marriott staff, and the guests immediately enjoyed the more comfortable flooring. While we were filming the splash pad, one guest remarked, “The colors are really vibrant. It’s not slippery at all. We’ve actually been to this hotel before, so it’s nice to see sort of the new, updated look and feel. And the kids really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun, and no one fell and everyone seemed to have a blast.”

The difference between concrete and Life Floor is more than just a reduction of injuries. The way families and kids played completely changed with the new surface. Parents started sitting down on the splash park with their kids, and toddlers flocked to this open and free play area without worry about bumps, bruises, or hot concrete.  

“The kids love it. The kids play differently out here with Life Floor. It’s a really funny thing - parents are out here sitting down with their kids. It’s hard to explain, but they play differently and they have more fun and it looks beautiful.”

— Brian Schinski, Operations Manager

Shaping Up Design at Grapevine: Our Answer to a Burning Question

The City of Grapevine, Texas is home to an aquatics program carefully curated to engage the community throughout the hot summer season. Between the waterpark, indoor recreation center, outdoor family pool, and splash pads, the award-winning facilities keep 54,000 citizens cool and active. The city’s morning and evening swim lessons, lap pool, and obstacle course are especially well known and loved by community members. However, with the Texas sun heating up the concrete deck to dangerous temperatures, the city knew it had to resurface the entryway.  

“In our entryway, we had no shade protection, so by 4 pm that concrete was 130-140 degrees at least.”

— Hunter Hardeman, Aquatic Supervisor of the Pleasant Glade Pool

Grapevine chose Life Floor because of the tile’s unique ability to dissipate heat underfoot. Unlike concrete, Life Floor tiles do not absorb heat, which is why the tiles feel comfortable to walk on in the summer sun.

Choosing a modern design in rectangles, the entryway now simulates a river flowing into the pool entrance, without the added cost of cutting curves into the tiles. With this affordable design solution, the floor is now a feature instead of a hot problem.

“We have really enjoyed Life Floor. It has definitely made our deck that used to be so hot much better to walk on. It’s great.”

— Hardeman

Parr Park Sprayground has experienced similar heat issues on its concrete splash pad. Using Cool Deck, the City of Grapevine tried to mitigate the hot surface, which ultimately lead to a slippery surface. The city approached Life Floor to solve the slippery, hot surfacing problems in combination with creating a completely new and unique design. It was the perfect timing. The Life Floor Studio had just finalized our newest Hexagon shape. 

“We’ve been really excited about adding hexagon tiles to our product line-up because they offer a completely different visual effect than what we’ve been getting from our square, rectangle, and triangle patterns. The hexagon can be seen as more modern or even more visually interesting to a lot of people. It also interlocks in a more radial way than our other shapes have. When arranged with enough variety of color, hexagons can create a really interesting mottled effect across a surface. For this reason, we think this shape has the potential to really enhance municipal splash pads without adding additional cost for custom-cut designs. Parr Park had a pre-existing splash pad with a swooping shape so I thought it would be fun to create a design that followed those curves. I really liked that the mix of cool tones could create a vibrant, futuristic feel that departs from so many of our other designs that often have nature-based or beach themes.”

— Kelsi Goss, Studio Director for Life Floor

A big thank you to the City of Grapevine for being our Hexagon pioneer! 

Installation by Preferred Installation Partner, Inside Edge.

NSF/ANSI 50 Passes Surfacing Standard for Interactive Waterplay Areas

This summer, after years of research, testing and careful evaluation, the Standard for Safety Surfacing in Interactive Water Play Areas has been added to NSF-50. And Life Floor is proud to be the first aquatic safety surface in the world certified to this standard. 

Looking Back Through History: Playground Safety Surfacing 

On October 17th, 1903 the first permanent municipal-built playground, Seward Park, was opened to a crowd of 20,000 children [x]). The adoption of these public play spaces was rapid. By 1907 there were 90 municipalities with playgrounds. In just three years that number grew to 531.[x] 

With this rapid growth of playgrounds, so too did the injury reports, emergency room visits, and critical head injuries. Parents and experts across the country recognized the growing injury trend, and worked to eliminate the largest and most prevalent hazards. 

In 1981, the Consumer Product Safety Commission published the Handbook for Public Playground Safety and parks were retrofitted to eliminate hard surfaces and high falls.

Splash Pads = Playgrounds + Water

Splash pads, like playgrounds, also have had a monumental and rapid adoption across the world. Splash pads were developed in response to providing kids with a play area to cool off without the drowning risk of pools or the sanitation problems associated with public fountains. In the rush to meet the demand, the role of finding safety solutions has been left to each individual operator, with mixed and inconsistent results. Every year, splash pads all over North America have closed to replace or retrofit their surfacing due to complaints, injuries and maintenance.  

Operators have especially struggled with surfacing options due to the playful and interactive nature of splash pads. Kids interact with each other by jumping and running from spray feature to spray feature without the protection of clothing or shoes. The combination of bare feet and concrete has left users with burned feet, bumps, bruises, broken bones and head injuries.  

To try to solve these issues, operators have been using playground safety surfaces like poured-in-place rubber. These surfaces, while great for dry applications, are simply not developed to interact with treated water. When the adhesive inevitably breaks down, particles clog filtration systems, patchy floors create tripping hazards and microbes grow inside trapped water.

For a lack of a functional surfacing system, many cities have resorted to hiring splash pad attendants to remind kids not to run. 

Unfortunately, these individual stop-gaps have not solved the world-wide problem facing splash pad operators. According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database, in 2014 alone, there were an estimated 20,000 injuries on pool decks, splash pads and water parks resulting in an emergency room visit.  

The safety revolution that transformed dry playgrounds is long overdue for splash pads. With the new NSF/ANSI 50 standard in place, operators will be able to reduce injuries and keep splash pads open, providing fun for their communities all summer long. 

After nearly a decade of designing, testing, and building aquatic surfaces, we have been proud to contribute to the process of creating these new safety requirements. The surface is an indispensable part of the play value, and overall experience of the splash pad. And that’s why we’re committed to designing the safest, most beautiful splash pad surfaces using only products engineered exclusively for aquatic play. We believe the best surface allows kids to play just as they should. Together, we’re creating a safer future for aquatic recreation, for our families, and for our communities.

Our tiles meet six unique performance based standards to meet certification: slip-resistance, impact attenuation, chemical resistance, UV resistance, cleanability, and impermeability. To learn more about our tile’s performance results, visit our NSF/ANSI 50 page.